Cubes

Question 1

What are the major steps for building a cube

Answer 1

1. Create a Data Source
2. Create a Data Source View
3. Design/Build the Analysis Cube

Question 2

What is the difference between Building a cube and deploying a cube?

Answer 2

Building a cube saves the scripts. Deploying the cube inserts data into the structure.

Question 3

What’s the difference between a natural and non-natural hierarchy?

Answer 3

Natural Hierarchy: One-to-many relationship

Non-natural Hierarchy: Many-to-many relationship

Question 4

What are Named Queries?

Answer 4

With named queries you can create a new table in your DSV that doesn’t exist in your source data. Data in the “named query” table is based on data from existing DSV tables, OR from other data sources not in your current DSV.

Question 5

What are Named Calculations?

Answer 5

New fields. Use named calculations to create derived and/or decoded fields based on existing fields. E.g. fullname, GMAT_rating

Question 6

Calculated Members

Answer 6

If it’s a new number that will be stored in your fact table, and requires you to reference mathematical operators and/or logical expressions in order to determine the number, create a new calculation.

Question 7

What are new measures?

Answer 7

If it’s a new number that will be stored in your fact table, and can be determined by using a count, sum, min, or max, create a new measure.

Question 8

What are KPI’s based on?

Answer 8

• The current Value of a previously-created calculated measure you’re interested in,
• Your business Goal for the measure (typically a constant),
• Status (a comparison of the current value to the goal) depicted visually
• Trend (a comparison of current value to previous time periods), depicted visually. Trend expressions must be time-based.
• MDX is used for KPIs

Question 9

What are actions?

Answer 9

Actions give users a way to take additional steps during their analysis of cube data. They are events that are user-initiated by right-clicking in cells.

Question 10

What are the categories of actions?

Answer 10

• Report: invokes a previously-created SSRS report based on the current cube data,
• Standard: a category of five actions that lets you do things like branch to a website specific to the data you clicked on—good for things like linking to a map,
• Drillthrough: provides you with detail-level data that produced that cell in the cube

Question 11

What is MDX used for?

Answer 11

MDX is the query language for data stored in multidimensional data files. We’ve already seen that MDX is the basis for creating calculated members, KPIs, and actions in SSAS cubes. It is also the basis for general querying of SSAS cubes such as the analyses we do in the cube browser.